


Fire Across Skylines

by theprincessandtheking



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Post-Break Up, a lot of booze, and some sunsets too
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-13
Updated: 2017-04-13
Packaged: 2018-10-18 14:35:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10618965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theprincessandtheking/pseuds/theprincessandtheking
Summary: If the last month had taught her anything, it was that skylines and sunsets went well with hard liquor and heartbreak. It had become somewhat of a routine in last few weeks. She’d come home from her shift at the studio with a new bottle of whatever had seemed most appealing on her pit stop at the liquor store and slip through the window to the fire escape. She’d perch herself on the staircase to watch the sun go down, feet draped over the edge beneath the rails to tease the open air. Sometimes she cried. Usually she just drank until the stars were too blurry to count.





	

**Author's Note:**

> One of these days I'll write some fluff without any angst. Today is not that day.

If the last month had taught her anything, it was that skylines and sunsets went well with hard liquor and heartbreak. At least, that’s what Clarke told herself as she took another sip from the bottle in her hands on the fire escape of her building. She found she didn’t mind the hard metal that pressed into her legs or the faint smell of smoke that drifted from the windows of one of the apartments below her, not when she was lost in the pinks and oranges that tinged the clouds above and the mesmerizing patterns of the red lights that blinked on top of the skyscrapers that sprawled for miles ahead of her.

The Baltimore summer heat made the air thick, blanketing her surroundings and seeping into her pores like the steam that rose from the city pavements below. The humidity it brought clung to her hair, kinking it into frizzy waves and weighing it down against her skin.

The first time she’d found herself out here, she’d just needed a place to release the emotions that had threated to drown her if she didn’t open the flood gates. She’d stayed there for several hours, watching the blue sky fade slowly to black, giving a silent roll call to the stars as they blinked to life. When she’d climbed back through the living room window with red eyes and wet cheeks, her roommate didn’t ask questions. Octavia wasn’t the type to pry, and for that she was thankful.

It had become somewhat of a routine in the weeks that followed. She’d come home from her shift at the studio with a new bottle of whatever had seemed most appealing on her pit stop at the liquor store and slip through the window to the fire escape. She’d perch herself on the staircase to watch the sun go down, feet draped over the edge beneath the rails to tease the open air. Sometimes she cried. Usually she just drank until the stars were too blurry to count.

Clarke didn’t consider herself the type to fall apart over a relationship. It’s not like she hadn’t had her fair share of heartbreak—after the Finn Collins Incident, she considered herself an expert in the art of post-breakup recovery. She was the type of girl who told the person who’d hurt her that he was a piece of shit and then became best friends with the girl he’d played right along with her.

But Lexa had been different. Clarke had known from the beginning that Lexa’s career would always be her priority. The cancelled dinner reservations, the last-minute texts saying she was working late again, the mornings when she’d left so early for work that the sheets were cold by the time Clarke woke up, they had all become things that Clarke accepted as part of their relationship. She understood and even appreciated the fact that she had found someone as driven and passionate as she was.

Clarke had known she was playing with fire, but she was somehow still blind-sided when she got burned.

Lexa took the job without even telling her she’d been offered it. And suddenly she was leaving for Seattle, packing up the life they’d spent the last year building together. A relationship on opposite coasts was unrealistic, she’d said, would only distract her from the duties she was being handed with the promotion.

She was gone within two days of breaking the news to Clarke.

Clarke leaned forward against the lowest rung of the railing, resting her cheek against the cool metal as she stared blankly at the lights that had begun to gradually go out one by one in the office building a few blocks away.

The sun was just dropping below the outlines of the tallest skyscraper when she heard the scraping of the window against the wooden frame.

“Hey there, princess,” a low voice drawled from the window below her. “Little early for stargazing, isn’t it?”

“Fuck off, Blake.”

Her nightly outings had become increasingly difficult to hide in recent weeks since Octavia’s brother had taken up residence on their couch. Bellamy had just finished up his doctorate in ancient civilizations and moved back to Baltimore, and Octavia had offered him a place to stay until his new apartment was available at the end of the month. Clarke thought August couldn’t come fast enough. 

Bellamy and Clarke had never seen eye to eye even before he’d left for grad school. He’d always been a cocky ass, convinced he was invincible and that the world would fall in line for him on command. And it pissed Clarke off how often that really did happen. Their dynamic was always precarious, a balance that rested uneasily on a pivot, able to tip one way or the other with the slightest passing comment or gesture. A small change in tone by Clarke would lead to a passive aggressive comment from Bellamy, and before anyone knew it they were passing jibes back and forth, her pointing out his need to control everything and him countering that people liked to control things when they didn’t grow up as a pampered princess.

They’d gotten off to a rough start after he’d moved in when Bellamy had borrowed one of Clarke’s mugs at breakfast one morning. It resulted in a coffee-stained floor and minor burns on most of his stomach, and Bellamy had made flippant comment about needing _some mugs that don’t make a goddamn mess everywhere_. The mug was cracked at the handle, only able to be filled about two-thirds of the way full before it would leak all over the counter. Clarke herself had begun to throw it away several times, but Lexa had stopped her, telling her that its brokenness was what made it special. She’d made a point to use it in the mornings every time she slept over.

Clarke had snapped at him, told him that the mugs in their cabinets were none of his fucking business. The argument had escalated quickly, and before long Bellamy had suggested she use some of _Mommy and Daddy’s money to go buy some new dishes that were more fit for a princess_. The reinstatement of the old nickname had stung her, and things had been somewhat tense between them ever since.

She put the bottle to her lips, willing him back inside as she took a swig.

“Clarke.”

She swallowed hard, savoring the burn that trailed down her throat and settled in her chest.

“Didn’t know you knew my real name,” she retorted hoarsely.

There was a quiet pause before she heard at the sound of feet hitting the metal of the fire escape.

“I don’t come out here because I want company,” she muttered. Despite her words, she found herself sliding over to make room on the narrow stairway.

“Well unfortunately for you,” he countered as he took a seat, “the fire escape is public property.”

She stared firmly ahead at the skyline, drumming her fingers against the glass of the bottle in mild irritation.

“I don’t want to talk.”

“Didn’t ask you to.”

Her eyes snapped to his face incredulously as he pulled the bottle from her hands and put it to his lips, taking a long drink before placing it in the small gap between them.

“Never pegged you for a whiskey girl,” he smirked.

“Sorry if you don’t deem my taste in alcohol fit for a princess.”

She felt him tense beside her as he let out a heavy breath.

“I’m sorry about that,” he said, a note of chagrin coloring his tone. “I was cranky from the third-degree burns and I let my temper get the best of me.”

She hadn’t been expecting an apology. It’s not like arguments like that were outside of their usual interactions, but Bellamy seemed sincere in his words.

“They were second-degree, at best,” she deadpanned. “I’m sorry, too. I was a little touchy about the mug. It was Lexa’s favorite.”

He nodded. He didn’t need to ask who Lexa was. She’d overheard a conversation with his sister one night after she’d slipped out to her usual spot on the fire escape. Bellamy’s sarcastic jibe had followed her out the window, and she’d heard Octavia telling him to lay off. She wished she hadn’t heard the pity in her voice as she told her brother that this was a normal thing for Clarke.

She took the bottle from his hand and took another drink, doing her best to ignore his eyes on her profile.

“You okay?”

And she almost lied. She almost told him she was fine, that it didn’t change anything even if she wasn’t, that she was better off. But something about the way his eyes grazed her cheekbones, the hum of the whiskey in her head, the stillness of the summer heat around her stopped the bullshit from falling from her lips.

“No.”

He didn’t say anything, waited for her to speak when she was ready. In the back of her mind, the patience surprised her. She took a shaky breath, her feet swaying in the open air below as she swallowed her pride and let out the words she’d wanted to say for weeks.

“I just want to know what changed,” she said. “I keep running over it in my mind, trying to figure out what went wrong. Last I knew we were happy, you know? One moment we’re discussing moving in together, and the next she’s just _gone_. And I just want to know how someone can go from telling me she loves me and that I’m important to her to suddenly saying I’m not worth the effort and time it would take away from her precious fucking career.”

Now that she’d started, she couldn’t stop, the words falling from her lips in a broken rush.

“I want to know how you can do that to someone you love. How do you tell someone you want to spend the rest of your life with her and then just drop her like she’s nothing to you? How do you do that?”

She looked at him for the first time since he’d sat down beside her. His eyes met hers with an unexpected sincerity, dark and understanding in a way that seemed incongruous with the Bellamy Blake she thought she knew.

“I don’t know,” he agreed. He let out a heavy breath, his dark lashes brushing across his freckles as he blinked hard at her question. “I don’t know, Clarke.”

“I just,” she turned back toward the lights that glowed across Baltimore, fighting to keep her voice steadier than the hands that shook around the bottle. “I did everything I knew to do. I tried everything—gave her everything, and it still wasn’t enough.” She swallowed hard. “I wasn’t enough.”

She watched intently as the red lights of a distant airplane flickered across the sky overhead.

“That’s the quickest way to self-loathing,” she mused as she took another pull from the bottle to shove down the tears that pricked at the back of her eyes. “Falling in love with someone who will never have the emotional capacity to love you back. You start to wonder why you aren’t enough. Start to wonder what it is about you that makes you unworthy of being loved the way you love other people. And the shitty part is you wind up coming up with a lot more answers to that question than you wish you had. Then little by little, those answers just eat away at you until you’re as incapable of loving as the person who broke you to begin with.”

A dry laugh fell from her lips.

“The universe has a sick sense of irony.”

He didn’t respond for a moment, and she wondered vaguely if he understood, wondered if she’d said too much. When he spoke, his words were far from what she’d expected.

“I don’t think that’s true,” he said, his eyes unseeing as they stared at the busy world around them. “I mean, it might be true for a lot of people, but not this. Not for you.”

Her eyes flicked to his profile for a moment before returning to the buildings that skimmed the clouds.

“You barely even know me,” she said flatly.

“I know that you care too much,” he answered without hesitation. “I know that you look out for your friends when they’ve had too much to drink. I know that you dropped out of medical school to run a nonprofit art program for kids. I know you were there for Octavia when I couldn’t be after our mom died.”

His voice broke slightly with the mention of his sister, and the look he gave her expressed the gratitude she knows he has no idea how to verbalize.

“Anyone who cares that much, about _everything_ ,” he continued a moment later, “anyone who naturally loves like that that could never be broken enough to not love at all.”

When her eyes met his, they found only sincerity. The words rested heavily on her heart, and though they didn’t entirely quell the storm that had been brewing inside of her for weeks, she though she felt the clouds lighten slightly. It surprised her that his words could hold so much weight, surprised her that the boy who had spent years igniting fires within her had become someone to douse the flames.

“And what about you?” she asked.

“What about me?”

She cleared her throat, the whiskey making it hard to find the words she wanted to say.

“You care,” she said. “More than anyone I’ve ever met.”

She saw the clench of his jaw from the corner of her eyes and braced herself for the snide comment to come. It never did.

She pressed further.

“So why are you out here, alone, drinking cheap whiskey and convincing your sister’s roommate she’s worth loving?”

“Because she is.”

The words seemed to slip from his mouth without thought, and a smile tugged at the corners of her mouth in spite of herself. She remained silent, waiting for him to answer her question.

“I dated a girl in grad school,” he said. “Gina. She was nice.”

Clarke scoffed.

“She was nice?” she mocked. “You pull a full-on analysis of me, but all I get is a syllable about a girl you dated? Come on, Blake, I’m sharing my booze here.”

He let out a breathy laugh, tugging the bottle from her fingers and taking a drink. He swallowed hard.

“When I was younger, my mom used to say I was too observant,” he said. “I noticed too much. I saw the way men would come and go from our house in the middle of the night, and I saw how immediately after, we suddenly had money for groceries or school supplies. And then one day, Octavia came.”

He spun the bottle in his hands, eyes fixed on the glass.

“I spent most of high school working and trying to keep up with her while my mom was just trying to make ends meet. I had a hookup now and then, but there wasn’t really time to date. And then I went to college, and I was working my ass off with a full-time job and keeping my grades up to keep my scholarship. Octavia talked me into applying to grad school in New York, and I humored her because I didn’t think I’d actually get in.”

He chuckled softly.

“She practically shoved me out the door to get me to go. Then when Mom died, I tried to come back here to make sure she was okay. I thought she was actually going to bite my head off when I suggested it.”

Bellamy looked at her, his eyes soft and filled with something she didn’t know how to classify. He gave her a small smile, and Clarke found herself wishing he’d do that more.

“She said she was okay,” he said. “Said she had you.”

Clarke smiled softly, thinking back to the nights she and Octavia had spent on the floor of their crappy apartment they’d moved into during undergrad, drinking and watching movies until Octavia cried or Clarke threw up.

“So when I started dating Gina, it was the first real opportunity I’d had to date,” he continued. “And I guess I just—I didn’t know how to love her. I was so scared of becoming my mom, scared of becoming the men that came to our house to use my mom, that I didn’t let myself get close to her. And one day she told me she couldn’t be with someone who was afraid to love her. And then she left.”

Clarke nodded.

“Loving someone gives them the ability to not love you back,” she finished.

His eyes met hers, and the understanding that passed between them felt like a warm shower after a long day, like the loneliness that had clung to her skin over the past month had suddenly started to rinse away. A smirk spread across his face, but this was a far cry from those that had infuriated her in the past. This one was sardonic but sad, graced with a wisdom that came with shouldering burdens far beyond his years, burdens she found herself wishing she had known about years ago.

And suddenly Clarke thought that Bellamy Blake might have been stronger than anyone she’d ever met. Sure as hell stronger than he’d ever let anyone know.

“For what it’s worth,” she said, “you’re worth loving, too.”

He didn’t respond, and she didn’t push. They found an easy silence as their eyes traced the paths of the jets that drifted across the darkening sky. The bottle passed between lips, and for the first time since Lexa left, Clarke found that the buzz in her head brought a warmth that spread through her whole body. And as the sun sunk below the Baltimore skyline, she thought that maybe sunsets were proof that endings could be beautiful, too.

A while after the moon had taken up its residence in the sky, bright against the black backdrop and casting its silver glow across the freckles she spent too much time inspecting, they slipped back through the window and into the apartment. They nodded a silent goodnight, both a bit afraid to break the spell cast by alcohol and starlight. Her pillow felt a bit softer and the sheets a bit warmer, and for the first time in weeks, Clarke slept through the night.

When she bumped into Finn Collins outside of a coffee shop six months later, and he asked her when she became friends with 'Bellamy Blake, of all people,' she supposed it all started that day. 

And another six months later when Octavia asked her when she fell in love with 'the lesser Blake, of all people,' Clarke supposed it started that day, too. On a fire escape at 2 am with soft words and humidity that clung to skin and a burning in her throat that she now knows had nothing to do with whiskey. 

Because it turns out when you throw someone who cares too much together with someone who notices more than he should, the shattered fragments they had never been able to piece back together inevitably find a new home. Some of his pieces fill the gaps between hers, and soon they are whole, each finding completion in the repair of the other. And soon they are one, neither sure where one stops and the other starts, glued together and steeled against the world they brave together. 

 


End file.
